Grown here,
not flown here.

Next time you spend money at small farm shops and markets, you’ll be getting more than good food.

You’ll be supporting small businesses and specialised producers who are dedicated to keeping local food production and traditions healthy. (If you’re one of those and you’d like an outlet, call us.)

This way of shopping and selling also means cutting down on those food miles and helps more farmers stay on the land and manage the natural landscape for the future.

And there you were, thinking you’d just bought a tasty home-made beef steak pie!

 


The Farm > What We Grow

West Craigie is a 260 acre arable farm; this means that we have no livestock.

So, what do we grow? Here’s a brief run-down.

Soft fruit – we grow a large range of soft fruits in tunnels and outdoors.

We use polytunnels to protect our crop and it also enables us to spread the season. (We also use bees to do the pollination - you can buy some delicious local honey in the shop.)
Vegetables – in the last few years, we’ve expanded the range of vegetables we grow. For example, beans, peas, cabbages, beetroot, squashes of all shapes and sizes and lots more.

Cereal crop by Alan and Jackie from Rankine Photography


Cereals – West Craigie is a good wheat farm, the main cereal that we grow. The wheat is sold to local mills for flour or animal feed. We keep a small amount of the straw for our strawberries; the rest is sold to a local stock farmer.
Potatoes –we used to grow our own potatoes, but due to the large investment needed for equipment, we now rent some land to a local farmer to grow his potatoes. He gets good ground and we get a great crop of wheat after it!

Fallow –We fallow a lot of ground every year to rest the ground from intensive farming. Furthermore, it gives the birds good nesting sites, we can control weeds without relying on selective herbicides and it gives a good crop of wheat the following year.

Linking the environment and farming – LEAF.  We are members of this organisation and are working towards obtaining the LEAF marquee.  To find out more, visit www.leafuk.org   
In short, we are committed to farming with nature whilst having a sustainable future.